Key for the Lost
by Preety bird
Summary: Set in season five of "Angel" and takes place after "Shells" when Wes is feeling most disparaged with the world..


Alright, this baby was brewing in my head for some time and I finally got to sit around and write. Honestly, it was because the bunny was all mean and nasty and kept on biting me on my arse. If it's a tad too much on the angsty side, recent personal events are to blame. Anyways, I've never done the pairing before whole-heartedly so hope you enjoy this little bit of something...  
  
Title: **Key for the Lost  
**  
Author: **preetybird  
**  
Pairing:**Wes/Fred centric**  
  
Rating: **PG  
**  
Warnings: **Takes place after "Shells"  
**  
Beta'd by the wonderful **Kelso**

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**Key for the Lost  
**  
The thick drizzling continued pouring noisily against the window pane like clattering pots and pans throughout a good portion of the afternoon. The heavens seemed to have found a slight gash in their unearthly attire; the torrent of warm, humid L.A. water falling ceaselessly into the coming night.   
  
How fitting.   
  
He paused in his precision packing and retrieved the odd-looking bunny from a damp corner of the box.   
  
He held the tiny paraphernalia to his nose and breathed it in deeply. The smell of mixed vanilla-jasmine and innocence brought Fred back completely, Fred sitting here at her desk and talking about some strange creature she was researching, Fred looking over a specimen with that excitable glint in her expressive eyes, babbling mindlessly as she went through a plethora of words in less than a minute's time.  
  
Fred leaving one final question that would forever be unanswered: Why can't I stay?  
  
Wes breathed in again, sucking up little flakes of dust and fighting back the urge to sneeze, holding the smell in, fixing it in his memory as best as he could, closing his eyes, while in through the window came the endless humdrum of the rain, now calling down in the dark like a dream: pink-pink-pink, pink-pink-pink.  
  
He sat bonelessly on the desk, placing the little bunny, Feigenbaum, next to the forgotten box. His study of the doll was ephemeral; already his mind was fixed on the subtle intricacies of tidying up the desolate office.   
  
He chuckled dryly as he briefly thought of himself as some deranged Gollum searching mindlessly for his precious. Yes, precious she was and dammit if his lack of apathy didn't prove her value of worth.   
  
Couldn't he be a shell too? Obscure himself in the pretty blues and harsh materials of thread and just remain there crouching inside in his own body, dormant and dead, atrophied from the lack of love, dreams and life. He'd stop dreaming a long time ago and assumed that prayer was an idle waste of time just as any human exercise of faith.   
  
He'd started to look at life through Fred's eyes. It was invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you had expended your own powers of adjustment. His point of view had shattered, his lens now dripping with muck and water for he couldn't adjust his focus on one clear point.  
  
It seemed better this way, in all honesty.   
  
No one specific thing or emotion to spend your time moaning and mourning over for there was too many minuscule wonders to leave behind. Too many things that would be devoid of the chance of being defiled for he was obsessing over a dead, blue corpse. A hard, cold mockery of life in the most cruelest sense.   
  
He glanced down at the tiny doll again and noted how it looked so out-of-place on the rough expanse of the office table. So lonely, so right.  
  
The little object brought forth a thousand new emotions in him, each one being more controversial than the last.  
  
It also reminded him of something an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that he'd heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in his mouth and his lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what he had almost remembered was incommunicable forever.  
  
He looked around him warily, picked up the doll and gave it a lingering kiss on the temple. Placed it back down on the table and turned the lights off as he went out of the office carrying the box entail.   
  
He thought about the past and yearned to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Fred. His life was now confused and disordered, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it slowly, he could find what that thing was...  
  
The gentle city lights slightly illuminated the gloomy interiors of the office while the rain was humming and wailing into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle in the stars.   
  
However, the small office wasn't empty for long as a dark shadow walked mechanically inside, picking up the aged doll rigidly and whispering deceptively softly in a mock-imitation of Fred's voice.  
  
"Why can't I stay?"

Hope you guys liked it as my real first attempt at Wes/Fred angstyness.

Smooches,

_Preety  
_


End file.
